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Music With Rocks In

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Before the universe began, there was a sound. It went : "One, two, ONE, two, three, four..." The Listening Monks discovered this, and it explains a lot. The cataclysmic power chord that followed was the creation of time and space and matter and it does Not Fade Away.

A long time later (on the Discworld's timeline) something flashed across the Disc's surface looking for the magic that could give it life and expression. It found a wall just behind Unseen University, and then there had always been a second-hand music shop there. The new shop (which had always been there) contained an irascible proprietress, a lot of junk, and a strange instrument in the shape of a crude guitar. The strange guitar contained The Music. All it wanted was a way out.

Away back in the dripping evergreen woods of Llamedos, in a rustic shack of mud and wood, Imp y Celyn spent the gloomy winter writing a song. It made him the new star in a country that listened religiously and took music seriously, but defined it too narrowly for him, and he set off to find his muse.(1) After a while, he came to a crossroads. Finding no one there, he took the road more travelled and came to Ankh-Morpork.

There, he found a horn player named Glod Glodsson and a percussionist called Lias Bluestone, also out of work and money, and then they found the shop that had always been there since yesterday. So the strange guitar found Imp, and a star was borne. The guitar wasn't something you played; it played the holder, it played the other musicians, it played the room and the audience. It didn't just play music, it played want and need and feel and go crazy right now before you lose your mind. When Imp held it it played him as no one ever played before.

Glod was a Dwarf and an experienced professional musician with an idea of what sold in the city. Lias, a Troll, brought the throbbing rhythms of Ggroohauga and the acoustic rocks that would give the new sound its name. Under the influence of the stuff in the guitar, the three made Music With Rocks In, and it was irresistible. It went from The Mended Drum to the Cavern Club to a regional tour to a huge free concert in Hide Park in days. Naturally, CMOT Dibbler attached himself to such a major new opportunity, and money poured in. (The "free" concert would generate a fortune in food, t-shirt, and recording sales.) The phenomenon took the great city and the neighboring plain to a pitch of excitement even higher (and even briefer) than the moving picture craze. It lasted about a week.

The three musicians disappeared in a spectacular coach crash and the Music went on, looking for a safer world. Music With Rocks In really died on the day the Music died, and a curious amnesia set in about it so that it is nearly forgotten in Ankh-Morpork. Elsewhere, another time, it may have recovered.

Oddly, while the Music is dead and forgotten on Discworld, its name pops up in the Truth. Otto Chriek, reacting with delight to the fact that Uberwald-style atmospheric weather (specifically castle thunder, in the best horror movie tradition) is happening in Ankh-Morpork, pumps his fist in the air and exclaims. "Muzic Viz Rocks In!"


(1) A demigoddess named Cantaloupe, apparently.

Annotations

Names of Discworld bands (and their counterparts in Roundworld):-

(* All the above are the same incompetent group.)

  • The Band With Rocks In - The Band (who toured with, and played live backing for, Bob Dylan)
  • Dwarfs with Altitude - Niggaz With Attitude
  • We're Certainly Dwarfs - They Might Be Giants
  • Boyz From The Wood - Boys from the Hood
  • &U - U2
  • Trollz
  • A Big Troll and Some Other Trolls

Other musical ephemera:-

  • Shave and a haircut - two pence... more than just a bit of musical nonsense or a jingle that evolved to help musicians tune their instruments. This originated in the 1950's as a verbal description of the musical style of one blues/rock and roll pioneer called Bo Diddley, a musical giant whose influence can be heard in the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and down the ages to the present day. And yes, one musician Diddley's style influenced was of course Buddy Holly.
  • Corgi PB p25:- I REMEMBER EVERYTHING....

Death is quoting directly from Jim Steinman's Life and Death and an American Guitar monologue, from the Bad For Good album of 1980, in which a teenage rocker acquires a guitar that takes over his life and among other things urges him to kill his parents. I REMEMBER EVERY LITTLE DETAIL AS IF IT HAPPENED ONLY YESTERDAY. Steinman is or was the eminence gris behind Meatloaf, and originally wrote this over-blown monologue for him to perform - then decided it was too good for him, and recorded it himself.


  • Corgi PB pp 147 - 156, and pp 371-373:- The long and awkward conversations between Susan Sto Helit and Death, which veer from intimate family talk to strict professionalism. Death and Susan agree on one thing: use of the word "Grandad" is right up there with the talking animals vocalising sentiments like "Oh my paws and whiskers!", governesses dancing on the rooftops with chimney-sweeps, and duetting with manically smiling bluebirds, as regards "shoot me now and get it all over with" behaviour. The Roundworld referent is a British character actor called Clive Dunn, who even in his forties was playing doddery old men verging on senility. Proving the British record-buying public is capable of occasional lapses from good taste, Dunn got to number one in the charts with a glutinously sentimental track called "Grandad", one which was allowed to ooze rather than be played. It involved Dunn in full old man rig, reminiscing about the good old days, being sung to, and occassionally kissed on the cheek or the top of the head by, suspiciously cute and innocent professional children of the Twyla and Gawain persuasion. And guess what happens on page 373, when Susan allows herself a moment of the sort of emotion that she assures herself she can give up at any time...

Somebody beat me to this one. See this Filk:- [1]

  • Corgi PB p171:- Susan Sto Helit, Ravens and the Death of Rats are in transit. Whilst negotiating Binky over a tricky white cloudbank and building up height to cross the Ramtops, Quoth the raven, in an ideal position to look down on the Disc, starts to quote Roundworld's Louis Armstrong about it being a wonderful world... no doubt Quoth has caught a line or two from accross the Multiverse, and the sight of skies of blue/and clouds of white is inspiring him.

A tangential association might be the group of singing crows/ravens in Disney's animation Dumbo, who are voiced by black American singers (including Armstrong?) in songs like I never Saw an Elephant Fly - which is no less ridiculous a concept than a flying horse...

  • Corgi PB p183:- The Dean's psyche resonates imperfectly with vibrations from across the Multiverse and he is soon confused with what statement to make on the back of his black leather robe. It comes out as 
DEAN
BORN TO
LIVE FATS DIE YO GNU

On Roundworld at least, "Dean" could refer to two charismatic performers with personality issues: film star with attitude James Dean, who died young in a car crash, and balladeer crooner Dean Martin, whose alcohol consumption was legendary even among the Rat Pack.

"Born to..." must have confused the Dean with a multiplicity of signals, as Narrative Causality ascribes two alternative punchlines: Born to Run, as in the Bruce Springsteen anthem, or Born to Lose, as in the Motorhead biker ballad (see here:-). Perhaps the second is most likely, as suffused by the influence of the Music, the Librarian then proceeds to build Discworld's analogue of a motorcycle. (without fully appreciating what it is or why). The Dean, by virtue of phyiscal size, seeks to be the first to ride it - echoes again of James Dean or Marlon Brando - but he then loses this to Death, who has a prior need...

"Live Fast Die Young" is an iconographic statement used to describe the short life and death of, among others, James Dean, Buddy Holly, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Marc Bolan, Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain. (It is clear Imp y Celyn is being set up by Narrative Causality to become the Discworld's tragic icon)

  • When the boys in Insanity buy a do-it-yourself leopardskin trouser set - to wit, one hard-of-hearing feline carnivore which is still very much alive - what else is this but a Deaf Leopard...
  • The "thieving cleric" who stole the secret of music from the Gods? Roundworld jazz pianist/composer Thelonious Monk... (felonious monk)

Corgo PB p314 "Whoever heard of a serious musician with a glove?" (Ermmm... Michael Jackson?)

The scene where Cliff destroys Buddy's harp by sitting on it (and later pays for it to be expensively rebuilt in the Street of Cunning Artificers) evokes legendary rock bad boys The Who, who famously destroyed their instruments at the climax of each gig. What is not as widely known is that the Who's canny manager employed a roadie purely to gather up the bits afterwards, so that they could then be returned to a repair shop and rebuilt, purely to be "destroyed" again - otherwise the expense of replacement instruments for every gig would have been phenomenal. Turnover was so fast that effectively, the same three sets of instruments were being repeatedly "wrecked" and rebuilt on a three-day cycle... generally speaking, Townshend and Entwhistle (born showmen both) would be satisfied if the neck of the guitar broke cleanly away from the body in a visually satisfying manner, necessitating a fairly simple and cheap repair job afterwards. And, On The Day The Music Died, does not Death, Entwhistle-like, perform a similar conclusive destruction job on The Guitar? (echoing also Jimi Hendrix, who famously set fire to his at the end of a gig)

"in a rustic shack of mud and wood" (above) - Imp y Celyn's home evokes Chuck Berry's classic song Johnny B. Goode, who the song tells us lived in a suspiciously similarly humble abode, but who could play a guitar just like ringing a bell.... In fact, Imp's song is called Sioni Bod Da, which is reasonable if slightly clumsy Welsh for Johnny, be good!

Of course, there is also a Blue Öyster Cult link in Soul Music. For some time, this correspondent was slightly dissappointed not to have found one, over and above Death striking a pose not unakin to the cover of Some Enchanted Evening, and then heading into the Disc's first (technically) fatal motorcycle crash on a sharp bend in the mountains - but then any number of songs about motorbike crashes, for there is, after all, no shortage of them in the Roundworld canon, could arguably be made to fit as a reference here. As the B.Ö.C. crop up frequently in Pratchetteana, it didn't seem possible they could have failed to make an appearance in this book!

The song is "The Marshall Plan" (from the Cultösaurus Erectus album) about a teenage dreamer called Johnny, who lives in "a dark ghost town in the middle of the West/Where Friday takes so long to arrive" and who is dreaming of rock music stardom. His girlfriend is a kindred spirit called Suzie, who goes missing at a rock gig... "He reaches out/But Suzie's dissappeared". Just when Buddy (aka Sioni, or Johnny, remember) needs her most, Susan Sto Helit goes missing during the gig, or at a time when they're really communicating, when the Wizards do a seriously inconvenient Rite of AshkEnte. In the song, Johnny then looks for his Suzie, evermore, at every rock concert he attends, either as fan or as headlining rocker. When Buddy can pull his mind from the baleful influence of the guitar, he develops a similar obsession with Susan, who has a habit of appearing and dissappearing at the Band's gigs.... (It's showtime! And he's caught up in the flow/He hates the rush, but he needs the Music so! Still he reaches out, but Suzie's dissappeared/Well, thats' the way it goes, at these rock 'n'roll shows...)

Songs about motorbike crashes and bike-related violent death that may be referenced in Death's fiery ride:-

  • The Shangri-La's - The Leader of the Pack
  • Mötorhead - Iron horse/Born to Lose
  • The Blue Öyster Cult - Feel the Thunder; Transmaniacon MC, Golden Age of Leather
  • Jimmy Cross - I Want My Baby Back.[2]
  • John Leyton - Johnny, Remember Me
  • Ray Peterson - Tell Laura I love Her
  • Corgi PB p364: After the crash, Death has been forcibly seperated into his component bones. As per reccomendations in the Gospel song, the bones re-assemble themselves...

The finger bone's connected to the...hand bone;/ The hand bone's connected to the...arm bone;/ the arm-bone's conected to the... shoulder-bone;/ Now hear the word of the Lord!/ Dem bones, dem bones, dem - dry bones/dem bones, dem bones, dem - dry bones

  • Corgi PB p376: Susan, Gloria Thogsdaughter and Princess Jade are wandering away from the fish-and-chip shop where the otherwise deceased Imp Y Celyn is actually alive and well and working. (Compare the urban myth about Elvis Presley faking his own death, and working in the obscurity of a burger bar somewhere - indeed in Good Omens, set on a world where its Death rides a white motorcycle, and denies any professional connection to Elvis, this is exactly the case).

They are discussing men/males of the species, arranged marriages, dowries, and what the future holds for all of them in this respect. Thinking about Jade's dilemma - go for the arranged marriage with the troll who owns a whole mountain, or stick to her guns and insist on the poor troll she loves, who can barely pay for the deposit on a bridge - Gloria thoughtfully quotes Roundworld's Tammy Wynette:

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman..." (the opening line of Stand By your Man)

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